The present invention is directed toward a piano keyboard, and more particularly, toward a piano keyboard having key touch point detection. While the invention is particularly applicable to piano keyboards displayed and playable on an electronic device having a touch screen, the invention also results in a keyboard of reduced physical size and with a simplified arrangement of keyboard keys, so it is not beyond the scope of the invention to apply the same to more mechanical keys with electronics for activating, generating, or reproducing tones.
There are numerous downloadable piano keyboard applications for electronic devices such as iPads, Droids, Kindles, and the like. However, due to the small size of the screens of these devices in comparison to the physical size of an actual keyboard, the number of on-screen keys available for playing in real time is seriously limited.
To compensate for this small screen size, these applications typically employ three solutions. The first is to reduce the width of the keyboard keys to allow a greater number of them to appear simultaneously on the screen. The second is to reduce the length of the keyboard keys to allow multiple rows of keys to appear simultaneously on the screen. The third solution is to implement a swiping maneuver to reposition the keyboard keys to the left or right while playing in order to access those additional keys that would normally be positioned off-screen.
While these techniques do serve to increase the number of keyboard keys available for playing at any given time, they also greatly increase the difficulty of playing due to the reduced key size and the additionally required maneuvers. Adding to this the lack of tactile feedback that is inherent in touch screen keyboards, these applications become impossible to play music in real time.
There is, therefore, a need for an application for iPads and similar electronic devices that displays a piano-like keyboard and provides means for allowing a user to easily utilize the same in a manner closer to a standard size keyboard.